“Display Eater” to go Open Source after failed “scare campaign”

I first heard about this “Display Eater” application on Boing Boing. The short version of the story is that it appeared that if you attempted to pirate the software, it would delete your “home” file on your Mac…essentially destroying your computer.

Not surprisingly, people didn’t take well to this idea, and the backlash for Reverse Code has been pretty severe. So severe in fact, that the Reverse Code website now simply features a short essay from “Reza” the software’s creator.

From the site:

There exist two illegal cd-keys that can be used to register the program without paying for it. When Display Eater detects these keys, it would delete your home directory.

However, this is not the case in reality. The whole purpose was to create a scare campaign. You can download, the file linked from the main page, which is now down(the link is still intact here), and check it for yourself. It has been this way since 2/7/07.

It was my hope that by creating a scare campaign, I could stop wasting time writing copy protection routines to be broken over and over.

It turned out to be a mistake.

“It turned out to be a mistake”…ya think?

Reza has decided to make Display Eater freeware, and open source, in the wake of this marketing blunder. If you want to download the software, you can visit the Reverse Code site and do so. Until the program is released as an open source application you can use the following key to unlock it.

PROD-9PNRM6-4RPRY-JUA5D-XW20G-J0MPY-9MTWX-2L9KW-1

Update: I tried it, and the key wouldn’t work. Let me know if any of you are brave enough to give it a shot.